As you all know, Windows 8 will be the first release of Windows NT which supports the ARM architecture. Microsoft hasn't been particularly forthcoming about this new Windows variant, but that's changing today. The company has posted a long and in-depth blog post about Windows 8 on ARM.

I'd like to know as well what the opportunity is supposed to be here? Windows 8 Tablets are off limits to anyone but MS, thanks to the custom written MS UEFI with secure boot only. WOA is firmware, incredibly powerful firmware with Office 15 integrated, but firmware nonetheless. So no real chance of getting anything Linux related on there.

Or are we talking about the attempt of KDE to bring their Plasma Active to market on a rebranded, Chinese tablet? Regardless of the quality of the software, a tablet with an 1 GHz yesteryear ARM SoC is no match for the coming dual and quad core ARM WOA systems. No matter how insanely optimised Plasma Active might be, single core SoC's won't be running circles around the newer crop of ARM chips. I do applaud the KDE project for having the wits to see that just making a DE platform isn't enough.

I'm a very happy Linux user, but since I've shed my rose colored FOSS, Kumbaya glasses, I've started to see clearly that opportunities are there for Linux to make a splash, but all these opportunities are NOT predicated on perceived failures of Microsoft.

How many times haven't we heard "Microsoft stumbled, this is a golden opportunity for Linux!" After which the Linux luminaries just sat on their butts, assuming that "not being worse than MS" is enough to take over. We have a few Linux based OEM's, like System76 and ZaReason, but lets be realistic here. Buying at these shops is just robbing yourself monetarilly for the pleasure of having a FOSSically correct machine. A very small selection of expensive machines too.

Where is the new business that makes laptops, desktops, tablets and works with upstream to ensure smooth software upgrades? The shop that sells Linux machines at comparable market prices? The shop that isn't afraid to do some marketing. Isn't afraid of pushing ODF and ODF office applications as first class components, based on a recognized ISO document standard.